County rescued from sight of male nipples

April 28, 2014

Whew … that was close.

In case you missed it, it appears Floyd County has emerged unscathed from a crisis of moral turpitude. We refer, of course, to that shameful billboard atop Katy Friend Mountain that exposed thousands of innocent eyes to the degradation and damnation of a shirtless man.

To the shock and horror of literally an entire handful of individuals, the depraved billboard attempted to lure passersby to that den of iniquity, the Mountain Arts Center, by posing Kentucky Opry character “Munroe” behind an advertisement, apparently wearing his trademark hat, red Chuck Taylors, a smile and nothing else. Why, it is nothing short of a miracle that no one was killed in wrecks along that stretch of highway. It is a testament to the strong character and decency of Floyd County women that they were able to steel themselves and avoid swooning from being overcome by the vapors upon viewing this lewd and lascivious image.

And yet, that same strong character and decency is being called into question, simply because so many local residents refused to react with wholly reasonable apoplectic conniptions of rage. Instead, they somehow viewed the billboard as “humorous,” or otherwise shrugged their shoulders in indifference.

The fact that so few worked themselves up into a blind and blathering furor over this blatant pornography is a dark stain upon our county that requires each of us to do some soul-searching. How is it that so many people were seemingly unbothered by an image almost as titillating as the opening credits of “Petticoat Junction”? For heaven’s sake, you could almost see the man’s knees!

Fortunately, we were rescued by a brave group of souls who, unencumbered by a sense of humor or embarrassment, heroically confronted the issue head-on. And by “brave,” “heroically” and “head-on,” we mean they hid behind anonymous angry phone calls to the MAC and Mann Toyota, which sponsored the billboard.

Showing all the resilience of a Jell-O mold in the hot, July sun, the MAC board of directors last week buckled like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and requested that the sign be taken down, thereby rightfully insulting all the godless heathens who refused to demonstrate their holier-than-thou attitudes toward their neighbors by taking righteous umbrage in the sign. Those lost souls probably think we should spend our time worrying about much less important things, like rampant drug abuse, the collapsing coal economy, or the imploding county budget.

Now that this first battle for puritanism has been fought and won in Floyd County, we can only hope that it continues to sweep the county like an unenlightened firestorm. Have you seen some of the magazines for sale by the checkout counter at the supermarket? Did you know that, every single day of the summer, there are men running around local swimming pools showing every bit as much skin as Munroe, if not more? In front of children, no less! Are you aware that many of the female performers at the MAC routinely expose their ankles for all to see, if not their entire calves? Why, just this past weekend, many of our local schools held disgraceful orgies of decadence, innocently called “proms,” where our children were exposed to and perhaps even participated in dancing!

This simply cannot be allowed to continue. We must act swiftly and decisively to strangle every last ounce of joy and humor out of life … for the sake of our children. We must show them that there is simply no excuse for going through life feeling anything but miserable and ashamed.

Surely, this over-reaction in the name of public decency will go a long way toward elevating Eastern Kentucky in the eyes of the rest of the nation and will demonstrate we are not deserving of the laughingstock label we so often get.